Efforts Advancing To Require 10 Commandments Display In PA Schools

HARRISBURG, PA — Despite a recent court ruling striking down a similar move in another state, two Republican lawmakers are launching separate efforts to have schools in Pennsylvania to display the Ten Commandments.

Rep. Stephanie Borowicz of Lockhaven wrote in a March 18 memo to colleagues that she plans to introduce legislation in the House "to affirm the God-given constitutional right to display a copy of the Ten Commandments within our Commonwealth schools."

A week earlier, Sen. Doug Mastriano, the state's 2022 GOP gubernatorial nominee, introduced a bill in the Senate that would require schools to display the Ten Commandments, the Declaration of Independence, the Pennsylvania Constitution and the U.S. Constitution.

In her memo, Borowicz stated that legislation similar to what she is planning recently has been introduced in other states, including Texas, Tennessee and Arkansas. She noted that Louisiana enacted a similar measure last year.

She did not mention that a federal district court in November issued an injunction prohibiting implementation of the Louisiana law requiring all public schools to permanently display a government-approved, Protestant version of the Ten Commandments in every classroom. The American Civil Liberties Union and others had challenged the law.

In introducing what he calls the Creation of Law in Our Schools Act, Mastriano cited a recent survey that found that only 47 percent of Americans can name all three branches of government, and one in five cannot name one.

“A nation that does not know its history is doomed to lose its identity," he said in a statement. "By ensuring that our students see and engage with these bedrock documents, we will instill in them a greater appreciation of law, responsibility and the sacrifices made to build this great nation.”

More than a dozen states have attempted similar bills in the past. When Kentucky attempted to do so in the late 1970s, the U.S. Supreme Court decision Stone v. Graham, found that it wiolated the First Amendment's Establishment Clause.